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en-usTechdirt. Stories about "wordpress"https://ii.techdirt.com/s/t/i/td-88x31.gifhttps://www.techdirt.com/Fri, 16 Feb 2018 10:41:00 PSTEveryone Creates: New Empirical Data Shows Just How Much The Internet Has Enabled A New Creative EconomyMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180214/23162739240/everyone-creates-new-empirical-data-shows-just-how-much-internet-has-enabled-new-creative-economy.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180214/23162739240/everyone-creates-new-empirical-data-shows-just-how-much-internet-has-enabled-new-creative-economy.shtmlVisit EveryoneCreates.org to read stories of creation empowered by the internet, and share your own! »

Just last week we announced our new site EveryoneCreates.org, in which we showcase stories of people who rely on the open internet and various internet platforms to create artwork of all kinds -- from music to books to movies to photographs and more. It appears that we're not the only ones to be thinking about this. The Re:Create coalition has just now released some fantastic economic research about the large and growing population of people who use internet platforms to create and to make money from their creations. It fits right in with the point that we made, that contrary to the RIAA, MPAA and its front groups like "Creative Future," the internet is not harming creators, it's enabling them by the millions (and allowing them to make much more money as well).

Indeed, the report almost certainly significantly undercounts the number of content creators making money on the internet these days, as it only explores nine platforms: Amazon Publishing, eBay, Etsy, Instagram, Shapeways, Tumblr, Twitch, WordPress and YouTube. Those are all great, and probably cover a decent subset of creators and how they make money -- but it leaves off tons of others, including Kickstarter, Patreon, IndieGogo, Wattpad, Bandcamp, Apple, Spotify and many other platforms that have increasingly become central to the way in which creators make their money. Still, even with this smaller subset of creative platforms, the study is impressive.

14.8 million people used those platforms to earn approximately $5.9 billion in 2016.

Let's repeat that. The internet -- which some legacy entertainment types keep insisting are "killing" content creators and making it "impossible" to make money -- enabled nearly 15 million people to earn nearly $6 billion in 2016. And, again, that doesn't even include things like Kickstarter or Patreon (in 2016 alone, Kickstarter had $580 million in pledges...). In short, just as we've been saying for years, while those who rely on the old legacy gatekeeper system of waiting until you're "discovered" by a label/studio/publisher and then hoping they'll do all the work to make you rich and famous, maybe that's a bit more difficult these days. But, for actual creators, today is an astounding, unprecedented period of opportunity.

This does not mean that everyone discussed here is making a full-time living. Indeed, the report notes clearly that many people are using these platforms to supplement their revenue. But they're still creating and they're still making money off of their creations -- something that would have been nearly impossible not too long ago. And, just as the report likely undercounts the size of this economy due to missing some key platforms, it also misses additional revenue streams even related to the platforms it did count:

It is impossible to determine an average income for members of the new creative economy, because
earnings vary so widely for each platform. As previously stated, this analysis includes only a single source of
income for each of the nine platforms. For instance, based on the current data, we include a YouTube star’s
earnings from YouTube but not revenues as influencers or advertisements on other social media platforms.

Also interesting is how the report found that creators are spread all over the US. While California, New York and Texas have the most creators, even those with the "smallest" numbers of creators (Wyoming and the Dakotas) still had tens of thousands of people using these platforms to make money. And, yes, in case you're wondering, the study excluded big time stars like Kim Kardashian using platforms like Instagram to make money, focusing instead on truly independent creators.

This is especially important, as it's coming at a time when the RIAA, MPAA and their friends continue their nonsensical claims that these very same internet platforms are somehow "harming" content creators, and that laws need to change to make it harder for everyday people to use these platforms to express their artwork and to make money off of it. It's almost as if those legacy gatekeepers don't like the competition or the fact that people are realizing they don't need to work with a gatekeeper to create and to make money these days.

So, once again, it's time to dump the ridiculous myth of "tech v. content." That's not true at all. As this report shows, these tech platforms have enabled many millions of people to earn billions of dollars that's only possible because they're open platforms that get past the old gatekeeper system.

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]]>it's-not-tech-v.-hollywoodhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20180214/23162739240Mon, 27 Mar 2017 10:42:40 PDTUK Home Secretary: I Need People Who Understand The Necessary Hashtags To Censor Bad People OnlineMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170327/00303837006/uk-home-secretary-i-need-people-who-understand-necessary-hashtags-to-censor-bad-people-online.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170327/00303837006/uk-home-secretary-i-need-people-who-understand-necessary-hashtags-to-censor-bad-people-online.shtml
So, last week a clearly troubled individual by the name of Khalid Masood killed four people in Westminster and, as happens all too often after something bad happens, politicians went insane. But no one more so than UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd, who really maybe should have taken a moment or two to find out what the hell she was talking about before going on TV spouting off complete and utter nonsense about technology, social media and encryption. Instead, Rudd, who again, I remind you, is in a very powerful position within the British Cabinet (sort of loosely equivalent to the head of Homeland Security in the US) said this while talking about getting various social media companies to be more proactive in censoring content:

“What I’m saying is the best people who understand the technology, who understand the necessary hashtags to stop this stuff even being put up, not just taking it down, are going to be them. That’s why I would like to have an industry-wide board set up where they do it themselves.”

The best people... who understand the necessary hashtags. The. Necessary. Hashtags. Or should that be #NecessaryHashtags. I mean, that's so insane that it distracts from the fact that the UK Home Secretary is literally saying that she wants internet companies to come together in a mass collusion to censor content the UK Home Secretary doesn't like.

Believe it or not, that wasn't even the craziest thing that this person-in-power had to say. Prior to the #NecessaryHashtags, we were given a full throated UK-version of James Comey and his silly, debunked "going dark" nonsense, just with a British accent:

“It is completely unacceptable. There should be no place for terrorists to hide.

“We need to make sure that organisations like WhatsApp, and there are plenty of others like that, don’t provide a secret place for terrorists to communicate with each other.

“It used to be that people would steam open envelopes, or just listen in on phones, when they wanted to find out what people were doing, legally, through warrantry, but in this situation we need to make sure that our intelligences services have the ability to get into situations like encrypted WhatsApp.”

We don't necessarily (hashtag or not!) need to rehash just how wrong this is -- we've covered that plenty of times in the past. The fact is there are always going to be tons of places where "terrorists" can communicate with each other that no one can see. Sometimes it will be in person. Sometimes it will be in public, but using a pre-designated code. And, of course, even more importantly, this crazy decision to blame encrypted communications apps in a case where even Rudd admits the guy was a lone actor, completely ignores just how important encrypted, private communications are to the rest of us. It takes quite a misguided thought process to think "here we have a disturbed lone actor who did an attack, and therefore we need to make absolutely everyone else significantly less safe." It takes an even more misguided process to take that thought and go on TV and announce it as an official plan of the UK government.

Oh, and remember, this is the same UK government that just months ago got massive new powers to spy on the public.

If it's not yet obvious from what was said above that Rudd is just playing tech buzzword bingo and has simply no idea what she's talking about, she also said this:

“We’re not saying open up, we don’t want to go into the cloud, we don’t want to do all sorts of things like that, but we do want them to recognise they have a responsibility to engage with government, to engage with law enforcement agencies when there is a terrorist situation”.

You're not saying open up and you don't want to go into the cloud? But you are saying that encryption shouldn't be allowed to work? What is she even saying? This is all nonsense. The companies do engage with governments all the time. When given a valid and legal warrant, they do what they can. Sometimes that's nothing.

Of course, all of this is coming on the heels of another misguided outrage at other tech companies for sometimes allowing bad people to use their tools. Paul Bernal has an oasis of sanity responding to some of this cesspool of craziness.

Terrorists use the internet to communicate and to plan because we all use the internet to communicate and plan. Terrorists use the internet to access information because we all use the internet to access information. The internet is a communicative tool, so of course they’ll use it – and as it develops and becomes better at all these things, we’ll all be able to use it in this way. And this applies to all the tools on the net. Yes, terrorists will use Google. Yes, they’ll use Facebook too. And Twitter. And WhatsApp. Why? Because they’re useful tools, systems, platforms, whatever you want to call them – and because they’re what we all use. Just as we use hire cars and kitchen knives.

[....]

The same is true of privacy itself. We all need it. Undermining it – for example by building in backdoors to services like WhatsApp – undermines us all. Further, calls for mass surveillance damage us all – and attacks like that at Westminster absolutely do not help build the case for more of it. Precisely the opposite. To the surprise of no-one who works in privacy, it turns out that the attacker was already known to the authorities – so did not need to be found by mass surveillance. The same has been true of the perpetrators of all the major terrorist attacks in the West in recent years. The murderers of Lee Rigby. The Boston Bombers. The Charlie Hebdo shooters. The Sydney siege perpetrators. The Bataclan killers. None of these attacks needed identifying through mass surveillance. At a time when resources are short, to spend time, money, effort and expertise on mass surveillance rather than improving targeted intelligence, putting more human intelligence into place – more police, more investigators rather than more millions into the hands of IT contractors – is hard to defend.

Why is it that all the sane thoughts on this seem to be coming from outside the government, and the craziest ideas coming from those in the highest positions of power?

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]]>oh,-and-to-break-encryption-tohttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20170327/00303837006Fri, 6 Mar 2015 04:06:53 PSTWordpress Wins Case Against DMCA Abuser... Who Ignored The ProceedingsMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150305/18021730221/wordpress-wins-case-against-dmca-abuser-who-ignored-proceedings.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150305/18021730221/wordpress-wins-case-against-dmca-abuser-who-ignored-proceedings.shtmlissued a DMCA takedown notice to Automattic, the company behind Wordpress.com, and the host of the article.

A couple months later, the legal team at Automattic decided it had had enough of these kinds of bogus takedowns and filed two lawsuits concerning bogus takedowns, including Nick Steiner's. As we've noted for years, the DMCA does have section 512(f) which allows for some punishment for bogus DMCA takedowns, but in practice, 512(f) has been almost entirely neutered by the courts. Yet here were cases of clear abuse.

So it's good to see that the court in the Hotham/Automattic/Steiner case has now ruled for Wordpress and awarded $25,084.00. Unfortunately, Steiner has more or less ignored the entire case, so it is really a default judgment. And, assuming Steiner never comes to the US, it may not ever truly impact him, and it's doubtful that he'll pay up. Still, at the very least, it's nice to see some sort of victory against bogus DMCA takedowns, given that it is so rare.

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]]>it's-a-starthttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20150305/18021730221Mon, 27 Oct 2014 21:02:00 PDTEFF Ranks Service Providers For Who Stands Up To Copyright/Trademark BulliesMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141027/17000528958/eff-ranks-service-providers-who-stands-up-to-copyrighttrademark-bullies.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141027/17000528958/eff-ranks-service-providers-who-stands-up-to-copyrighttrademark-bullies.shtmlWho Has Your Back rankings, in which it looks at various internet companies to see who protects your privacy against governments and lawsuits. Now, the EFF has come out with an offshoot chart, looking at who has your back when it comes to bogus copyright and trademark demands. The only two companies that get a perfect score are Automattic/WordPress and NameCheap, as you can see on the full chart. The worst, somewhat surprisingly, is Tumblr, which scored a big fat zero out of the five listed items.

Automattic's Wordpress.com and NameCheap were the only two companies to receive five out of five stars. However, two other companies were recognized for going the extra mile: Etsy, for providing educational guides, and Twitter, for publishing regular and thorough transparency reports. Overall, 10 companies did not publish adequate transparency reports, highlighting an information black hole for consumers. Additionally, four companies missed a star for their counter-notice practices—a critical procedure for restoring content that may have been taken down without cause.

Twitter lost a point for not documenting the counternotice process. Etsy lost a point for failing to have a transparency report (something I'm guessing the company will do before too long). Facebook also doesn't have a transparency report -- though it does have one for government requests, so hopefully it will expand that to copyright and trademark takedown requests as well. YouTube lost points for not requiring a DMCA notice (thank you ContentID) before taking down content. Imgur also doesn't require a DMCA notice (which surprised me).

The EFF's original "Who Has Your Back" effort really did help shame many companies into upping their game in protecting the privacy of users from government requests. Hopefully this new one will do the same for copyright and trademark takedowns.

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]]>good-to-seehttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20141027/17000528958Thu, 7 Mar 2013 11:42:19 PSTPrenda Law Issues Subpoena For IP Addresses Of Every Visitor To Critic Blogs For The Past Two YearsMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130307/10090322242/prenda-law-issues-subpoena-ip-addresses-every-visitor-to-critic-blogs-past-two-years.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130307/10090322242/prenda-law-issues-subpoena-ip-addresses-every-visitor-to-critic-blogs-past-two-years.shtmldefamation lawsuits against commenters on two key blogs that have been instrumental in exposing their shenanigans: FightCopyrightTrolls and DieTrollDie. While John Steele has dismissed his claim, the other two suits are still moving forward as far as I know. And now it's come out that Prenda Law's Paul Duffy sent a ridiculously broad subpoena to Wordpress demanding every IP address of every visitor who has visited either site since the beginning of 2011. Basically, they're looking for everyone who has ever visited either site:

Our client is requesting all Internet Protocol addresses (including the date and time of that access in Universal Coordinated Time) that accessed the blogs located at dietrolldie.com and fightcopyrighttrolls.com between January 1, 2011 through the present. Please provide this information in an Excel spreadsheet.

The subpoena is from Paul Duffy, so it's a bit ridiculous to claim "our client" since he is the client. This seems like a pretty clear abuse of the subpoena process, though, coming from Prenda Law, whose specialty is doing anything it possibly can to get IP addresses, perhaps it's no surprise. The subpoena was issued in association with the original claim that was filed in state court. The cases have all been removed to federal court, and hopefully the lawyers at Wordpress know better than to just cough up this info like that. Even more ridiculously, Duffy tries to claim that this is an "emergency" so they shouldn't waste any time in handing over the info:

Due to the emergency nature of the requested information, it is imperative that your organization responds to the subpoena immediately. The requested information is perishable and vital to the claims asserted in a complaint alleging widespread and systematic defamation.

What hogwash. They're looking for data going back to January of 2011. If Wordpress has logs going back that far, it's not like they're suddenly going to disappear. And, of course, the "widespread and systematic defamation" claims are already pretty questionable.

It's not difficult to look at this and see a likely attempt at creating chilling effects to try to scare people off from visiting those sites. Considering that Prenda has been collecting all sorts of IP addresses in its various copyright trolling lawsuits, can you imagine what they might do if they can cross reference IP addresses of visitors to those sites with the IP addresses they've already sued over?

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]]>what-are-they-smoking?https://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20130307/10090322242Wed, 11 Jan 2012 04:18:41 PSTWordPress The Latest Tech Company To Come Out Strongly Against SOPA/PIPAMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120110/17470317370/wordpress-latest-tech-company-to-come-out-strongly-against-sopapipa.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120110/17470317370/wordpress-latest-tech-company-to-come-out-strongly-against-sopapipa.shtmlthere's no real opposition to SOPA and PIPA, yet another massive online player has come out forcefully against SOPA -- and urged its users to do the same. WordPress.org has taken a break from its usual "we don't take political positions" position and come out strongly against both bills.

Normally we stay away from from politics here at the official WordPress project — having users from all over the globe that span the political spectrum is evidence that we are doing our job and democratizing publishing, and we don’t want to alienate any of our users no matter how much some of us may disagree with some of them personally. Today, I’m breaking our no-politics rule, because there’s something going on in U.S. politics right now that we need to make sure you know about and understand, because it affects us all.

And if you think WordPress is just some small tech player, you haven't been paying attention. WordPress is huge:

We are not a small group. More than 60 million people use WordPress — it’s said to power about 15% of the web. We can make an impact, and you can be an agent of change. Go to Stop American Censorship for more information and a bunch of ways you can take action quickly, easily, and painlessly. The Senate votes in two weeks, and we need to help at least 41 more senators see reason before then. Please. Make your voice heard.

Yeah, but no one's really against these bills, right SOPA/PIPA supporters? As Jane Wells, who wrote the post about this, notes, she's "freaked the heck out," because this bill threatens some of the fundamental principles of the internet, the same principles that democratized publishing and the independent web.

Every time you click Publish, you are a part of that change, whether you are posting canny political insight or a cat that makes you LOL. How would you feel if the web stopped being so free and independent? I’m concerned freaked right the heck out about the bills that threaten to do this, and as a participant in one of the biggest changes in modern history, you should be, too....

[....]

Some thoughts:

In the U.S. our legal system maintains that the burden of proof is on the accuser, and that people are innocent until proven guilty. This tenet seems to be on the chopping block when it comes to the web if these bills pass, as companies could shut down sites based on accusation alone.

Laws are not like lines of PHP; they are not easily reverted if someone wakes up and realizes there is a better way to do things. We should not be so quick to codify something this far-reaching.

The people writing these laws are not the people writing the independent web, and they are not out to protect it. We have to stand up for it ourselves.

Blogging is a form of activism. You can be an agent of change. Some people will tell you that taking action is useless, that online petitions, phone calls to representatives, and other actions won’t change a single mind, especially one that’s been convinced of something by lobbyist dollars. To those people, I repeat the words of Margaret Mead:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

People are speaking out in droves. Will Congress still ignore them?

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]]>welcome-to-the-clubhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120110/17470317370Fri, 17 Dec 2010 19:39:00 PSTWordPress Accused Of Copyright Infringement For Its Famed 'Hello Dolly' Sample PluginMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101217/15042512325/wordpress-accused-copyright-infringement-its-famed-hello-dolly-sample-plugin.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101217/15042512325/wordpress-accused-copyright-infringement-its-famed-hello-dolly-sample-plugin.shtmlHello Dolly plugin that is part of the default install. If it's enabled, then you get a short lyric from the song in the corner of the admin-only dashboard. It was basically just a fun simple plugin, mostly used to demonstrate the plugin functionality of WordPress. However, as Craig points out, some folks in the WordPress community are pointing out that, technically the plugin may be violating the composer's copyright. It does not appear that the composer, Jerry Herman, cares or has complained about this, but some in the WordPress community worry that every install of this WordPress plugin may technically be infringing -- and they've filed a bug asking WordPress parent corporation Automattic to indemnify users of the plugin and/or explain if the song has been licensed..

The whole thing, of course, is pretty ridiculous, but seeing as we have seen a growing number of copyright complaints over lyrics sites, you could see a potential lawsuit. Of course, it's hard to see how the use of such lyrics in the plugin -- in any way -- cause any harm to the song or the composer. In fact, chances are it has done the exact opposite. But such is the state of copyright laws today that doing something as simple and as fun as creating the Hello Dolly plugin may have made copyright infringers out of millions of bloggers. Of course, there's a pretty strong argument for fair use in this case, but tragically, due to copyright law customs, you can't know if it's really fair use until after there's an actual lawsuit. Hopefully, this is all moot and no one actually sues. But it's a rather sad statement that a plugin famous for this description:

This is not just a plugin, it symbolizes the hope and enthusiasm of an entire generation summed up in two words sung most famously by Louis Armstrong: Hello, Dolly.

might have to be killed of due to copyright fears. Thanks, copyright, for killing off a symbol of hope and enthusiasm of an entire generation.

It's unfortunate that the company is responding to them in misleading ways. For example, it recently took down some content and blocked the ability to post any new content, based on a DMCA takedown message claiming, incorrectly, that "we were legally required to remove the file from our servers." That's not quite true. First, Wordpress is not legally required to do so. It is true that the company is certainly strongly incentivized to do so, since not doing so could open it up to liability, but that's not the same as saying they're legally required to do this.

However, in this case, the details look even worse. The "content" in question was merely a link from a blog to an unauthorized version of an ebook. The author of the blog, which talks about ebooks, was complaining about certain ebooks not being available:

In a blog post, Ricardo had bemoaned the fact that a book, Ken Follett's 'Fall of Giants,' wasn't available in Spanish on the Kindle. He noted, however, that the publishers of the book didn't mind people converting other formats but presumably to save people the bother of messing with DRM removal, he linked to an already converted copy hosted on a file-hosting service.

The local IP "protection" group posted a comment on the site, demanding he take that down, and when he either didn't notice the comment or didn't realize it was real, they went to WordPress, claiming that he had ignored their takedown request. Furthermore, as the article notes, under Spanish law, a link to infringing content is not, itself, infringing. In the US (where the servers were likely hosted -- so it could have an impact), links are still something of a gray area, unfortunately. Of course, it's rather amusing, as noted in the TorrentFreak article that the very first comment on that particular story complains that "the link doesn't work." So this whole thing may have been over absolutely nothing...

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]]>that's-unfortunatehttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101113/16515211858Mon, 13 Sep 2010 17:55:59 PDTWordPress Trademark Transfered From For-Profit Company, To Non-Profit FoundationMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100912/23545710983.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100912/23545710983.shtmlsmart and open trademark policy, in that it readily and freely licenses its trademark to many companies, with only a few small exceptions. It looks like blog provider WordPress is doing its own interesting trademark move as well. The company recently announced that it has transferred the WordPress trademark away from the company itself and given it to the WordPress Foundation, a non-profit organization charged with promoting access to WordPress and related open source projects. In other words, even if the company's current execs lose control over the company, the trademark itself won't be abused by new owners, since the mark will remain with the foundation. Given how often we see trademark law being abused these days, both of these examples of smart, forward-looking companies taking a much more progressive approach on trademark really is quite refreshing.

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]]>didn't-see-that-cominghttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100912/23545710983Fri, 11 Jun 2010 12:40:00 PDTLawyers Who Tried To Get Into The Mass 'Pre-Settlement' Game Threaten WordpressMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100611/0319489778.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100611/0319489778.shtmlcalled them the "new entrants to the hall of infamy." After that, TBI "reluctantly agreed" to stop these kinds of campaigns, due to "the amount of adverse publicity" that came with it. Apparently TBI is a big law firm that's been around for nearly two centuries, and it realized that smearing its name this way probably wasn't a good idea.

However, in one post, the blogger behind the site put up a "wanted" poster of a TBI lawyer who had been involved in the pre-settlement letter campaign along with a blog post quite critical of the firm. Rather than go after him directly, TBI is using a bit of third party liability trickery, claiming first that using the image of one of its lawyers in a "wanted poster" is copyright infringement, and secondly, that the nature of the wanted poster was defamatory. TBI claimed that Automattic, the company behind Wordpress.com would be liable for defamation.

Of course, Automattic is a US-based company, and it almost certainly would not be liable under either issue. On the defamation claim, it's clearly protected by Section 230. On the copyright claim... well... just a year ago we wrote about an almost identical situation, with some company execs suing a guy who created "Wanted" posters out of their corporate photos. The company claimed copyright infringement, but the court noted it was fair use. Unfortunately, Automattic accepted the complaint as a DMCA takedown and removed the content to avoid liability. Perhaps the ACSBore owner will file a counternotice and get the image put back up.

TBI is also trying to find out the identity of who is behind the ACSBore blog. Wordpress is standing behind its user on that front, though, saying: "We will not, under any circumstance, disclose any contact/personal/private details of our bloggers without a U.S. Court Order, and this has not been presented to us."

For a company that was worried about its reputation, you would think it would learn that trying to intimidate critics is probably going to backfire badly and give you an even worse reputation than whatever it was you did in the first place. If TBI is really worried about bad publicity, it should ignore the critics -- not try to bully them legally into shutting up.

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]]>let me explain safe harborshttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100611/0319489778Wed, 5 Aug 2009 08:30:00 PDTTwitter, WordPress, Ning & GoDaddy All Sued In Mistargeted Lawsuit Over DefamationMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090804/1550405772.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090804/1550405772.shtmldefamatory Twitter message about a landlord made the news. This week, we've got another defamation suit involving another Twitter message and a condo building, but the situation here is quite different. First, if the alleged facts are true, it does sound like it could be defamation. It involves some condo owners, and who used Twitter, blogs and other websites to apparently accuse the condo board president of a variety of things including "murder, bribery, extortion, illicit payoffs, and corruption." Assuming those things are untrue, it would appear that the guy targeted by all this, Daniel Neiditch, has a decent defamation claim.

However, rather than just sue those folks responsible for the message, Neiditch's lawyers appear to have sued pretty much every company that these messages could loosely be associated with, including Twitter, WordPress, Ning, and GoDaddy. As Sam Bayard notes in the link, it appears that Neiditch's lawyers appear not to know about Section 230 of the CDA. That's a pretty big one for your lawyers to miss when filing a lawsuit like this. Ultimately, all four of those companies should have the case easily dismissed under Section 230, but it will be a waste of time and money in the meantime.

Of course, even if they were totally unaware of Section 230, basic common sense should tell you that these sites, hosting the content (or the domain, in the case of GoDaddy) should never be responsible for what was written on those sites. Going after them as a part of the lawsuit appears to be a blatant money grab, by trying to tie any company to the lawsuit, no matter how ridiculous the connection is between the actual action and the company. There really ought to be sanctions against lawyers who do such things, because it happens way too often.

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]]>someone-please-learn-section-230https://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090804/1550405772Fri, 11 Apr 2008 03:34:00 PDTBrazil Bans Bully And A Bunch Of BlogsMike Masnickhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080410/164444814.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080410/164444814.shtmlban on YouTube to hide a single video (which a lot more people saw after the ban was put in place). Eventually the courts reversed the ban and even required the model whose video resulted in the ban to pay Google as compensation for the unnecessary ban. Even with that experience, however, it looks like the Brazilian courts are prone to overreacting and broadly banning anything it doesn't like.

First up is the news that a Brazilian court has banned the sale of the video game Bully. This would be the same video game that Jack Thompson went to court to have banned even though he had never played it -- and even though anti-bullying activists praised the game, noting that it really was no different than movies like Rushmore or Napoleon Dynamite. The judge's explanation for the ban is a bit weak: "The aggravating factor is that everything in the game takes place inside a school." I really don't see how that matters. The game is about a kid learning to deal with different cliques and factions in a school. That seems rather realistic. Does the judge think that real life cliques in schools will suddenly disappear if this game is unavailable? Perhaps Stephen King can head to Brazil and convince them why this is wrong.

On top of that, news is coming out that a Brazilian court has also banned access to Wordpress.com, one of the most popular blog hosting sites around. It looks quite similar to the YouTube situation, where the judge really just wanted a single blog banned, but without an easy way to do that, ISPs are blocking the entire site and every blog carried on Wordpress. This is, just as with the other bans, a total overreaction. Not only will it call more attention to the "problem" blog, it will piss off and inconvenience a ton of totally innocent people as well.